By Nolan Bianchi Hunter Brown is in the place where everything came together for him. As Brown, a 24-year-old St. Clair Shores native and Wayne State University product playing with the Houston Astros prepares to make just the second MLB start of his career, imagine how surreal this all must be. Brown, who graduated from St. Clair Shores Lakeview, had just one Division I offer coming out of college (Eastern Michigan). He developed into a legitimate big-league prospect at Wayne State under head coach Ryan Kelley after a few years of struggles. Brown posted ERAs above 4.00 in his first two years with Wayne State. His junior year in 2019, the year he was drafted in the fifth round by Houston, Brown posted a 2.21 ERA, 9-0 record and 12 strikeouts per nine. “His freshman and sophomore year, he started getting some valuable experiences,” Kelley said. “Some were productive and some he had to go through the grind of adversity as a college pitcher. He never wavered from his work ethic and he kept pushing forward. Once his junior year was here, a lot of things came together and it was really special.” Kelley said he plans to bring his Wayne State team, which last season set a program wins record, to the game Tuesday. The Tigers are offering discounted tickets for WSU students during the Astros series. Brown is the second Wayne State alumni who played under Kelley to make the big leagues alongside Anthony Bass. “I think we try to emulate what Wayne State University and what the city has meant to the world of sport, obviously a lot of hard work, dedication, sacrifice, perseverance, and from what we know about Hunter Brown, that’s what he emulates and represents,” Kelley said. 

By Chandler Rome Homecomings pay homage to the past and retrace paths taken to prominence. Hunter Brown walked every day this winter with a German Shepherd husky mix named Whiskey. Dog and dad traversed the streets of downtown Detroit toward the ballpark that bred Brown’s dreams. He saw countless games at Comerica Park during one of the most dominant eras of Detroit Tigers history. Brown fantasized of one day joining them. He mimicked the ace’s mechanics, unaware that one day he would his teammate in the middle of Texas. Tuesday will turn Brown’s boyhood goal into a reality. Houston’s most ballyhooed started pitching prospect will make the second start of his major league career at Comerica Park, in the shadows of an apartment he still inhabits and a city that fostered Brown’s resolve. Detroit instills a drive in those who live there. “A lot that is real in Detroit and growing up in the Detroit area,” said Wayne State baseball coach Ryan Kelley. “I’ve never seen Hunter Brown waver from anything that is blue collar.” 

Robot delivery is now available on the campus of Wayne State University. The service through Grubhub just launched this week, and the school says it’s the first university in Michigan to bring automated delivery to campus. The service launched Tuesday and delivers from a handful of university-affiliated restaurants. Students use their phone to place an order and when it arrives, they use their phone again to unlock the compartment and get their order. “We’re in the early stages, but I’ve seen a lot of excitement,” Alex Mackenzie with Wayne State Dining Services said. “People use it, ask a lot of questions.” Mackenzie says the robots have mapped out campus and can adjust to traffic patterns and construction, navigating their way around bumps in the road. “It’s smart enough to know when to stop at a stoplight, when a human is coming, a bike is coming, all of those things.”  

To many in the LGBTQ community, there seem larger, more pressing issues, and in some cases there are. Homelessness. Mental health crises. Suicidality. But tobacco use, more likely among LGBTQ people than other groups, is a health threat. Michigan authorities are working to address the inordinate rate of smoking and vaping among LGBTQ people. Overall, LGBTQ people are 1.5 to 2.5 times more likely to smoke cigarettes than heterosexual individuals, as reported by the state health department. Unmet health care needs and substance abuse are linked, and addressing the higher rates of smoking is important because of all the possible and well-documented health consequences associated with smoking. “Which then magnifies the health disparities that exist,” said Luisa Kcomt, assistant professor and expert in health equity and health disparities at Wayne State University. “So, if we don’t pay attention to tobacco use, and it keeps proliferating, and we allow the tobacco companies to market to them, then they’re just going to have a higher risk of getting sick earlier and dying sooner.”  

Wayne State University has received a five-year, approximately $11.3 million award from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health to create a new Superfund Research Program, the “Center for Leadership in Environmental Awareness and Research (CLEAR).” The Center will be dedicated to understanding and mitigating adverse birth outcomes and serious developmental health problems that have been associated with urban environmental exposure to volatile organic chemicals (VOCs), a special class of pollutant found in the subsurface of post-industrial cities like Detroit. Headquartered on the Wayne State campus, CLEAR will focus on Detroit as the principal study site. The CLEAR team consists of engineering and biomedical scientists, educators and community partners. The CLEAR research team is led by Melissa Runge-Morris, M.D., and Carol Miller, Ph.D, who also co-lead the One Health Initiative at Wayne State University. 

On Thursday, the Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy, in collaboration with the U.S. Capitol Historical Society, released a new “Portrait in Oversight” commemorating the first and only bicameral investigation by the Senate and House intelligence committees. The joint investigation examined the intelligence failures leading up to the 9-11 terrorist attack n the United States and helped produce key reforms. “Understanding how Congress handled classified information issues in prior investigations like the 9-11 inquiry – as well as Iran-Contra and the Church Committee – can help guide future congressional investigations into such matters as the classified materials at Mar-a-Lago and the US. Departure from Afghanistan,” said Jim Townsend, director of the Levin Center. “Reminding Congress about the value of bipartisan techniques and precedents is one reason the Levin Center works to preserve congressional investigative history in its series of ‘Portraits in Oversight.’”  

Hilary Marusak, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences at Wayne State University, wrote an article for The Conversation outlining the benefits of meditation for children. Children actively meditating experience lower activity in parts of the brain involved in rumination, mind-wandering and depression, Marusak’s team found in the first brain-imaging study of young people under 18 years old. Over-activity in this collection of brain regions, known as the default mode network, is thought to be involved in the generation of negative self-directed thoughts – such as “I am such a failure” – that are prominent in mental disorders like depression, Marusak writes. She shares findings that meditation techniques were more effective than distraction at quelling activity in that brain network, which reinforced research showing that meditation techniques and martial arts-based meditation programs are effective for reducing pain and stress in children with cancer or other chronic illnesses – and in their siblings – as well as in schoolchildren during the COVID-19 pandemic.  

The world, including metro Detroit, is reacting to the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Janine Lanza, associate professor in the history department at Wayne State University, discussed the impact the queen had on so many lives. “I think that much of the way she ruled was shaped by the fact that she was a woman on a throne that was meant for men. She was relatable, she was a young wife and a young mother when she took over the throne when her father died. And yet, she always had a stature and a regal way about her that showed that she was doing her duty to the county and to the institution of the monarchy. And so, she really blended those two elements of being queen very well, I think,” Lanza said.  

In its latest philanthropic push in Detroit, the billionaire Gilbert family has committed $10 million over three years to help fund the ongoing activities of three organizations pushing to grow the area’s startup sector. The Gilbert Family Foundation formally launched Venture 313 on Thursday. The initiative aims to devote a variety of resources – financial and other forms, along with three partner organizations familiar to many in Detroit’s startup community – to provide Detroit-based founders with meaningful opportunities to participate in the innovation economy. As part of its involvement in the initiative, ID Ventures will source high-growth venture deals and invest between $25,000 and $250,000 using the SAFE note mechanism. TechTown, a longtime small business incubator in Detroit affiliated with Wayne State University, will invest in smaller businesses that are primarily looking to evolve from ideation to the creation of a minimum viable product. The incubator will provide grants ranging from $500 to $25,000, as well as ongoing support and coaching for entrepreneurs. “It is critical that we empower founders with the resources they need to turn a passion into a product, and continue to invest in their entrepreneurial journey,” said Ned Staebler, vice president for economic development at Wayne State University and president and CEO of TechTown. “The only way to achieve real and sustainable economic development is by investing on Main Street, and we are excited to join the Gilbert Family Foundation and Venture 313 to support the next generation of Detroit startups.”  

Across the Detroit Public Schools Community District, student math performance, which was already alarmingly low before the pandemic, has gotten even worse. Federal COVID relief funds were used to support summer programs, but district officials are still laboring without a clear formula for how best to tackle the problem. While there’s growing consensus on the benefits of one-on-one and small-group tutoring for literacy education, math experts and educators continue to debate the most effective solutions to the more recent learning loss and the longstanding insufficiencies that have plagued math education in Detroit and across the country. The school board approved a $319,500 contract with Math Corps, a nonprofit tutoring group housed at Wayne State University, to provide Tier 2 and Tier 3 support for students at Martin Luther King Jr. Senior High School.  

Data show that Generation Z youth are coming out at earlier ages than previous generations of sexual- and gender-diverse individuals. However, little is known about LGBTQ youth’s perspectives on how or if parent-child discussions at home about health and sexuality sufficiently meet their sexual education needs. A new study led by Dalmacio Flores from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, co-authored by Lloyd Allen of Wayne State University’s School of Social Work and Jacqueline A. Bannon of Northwestern University, has explored the perspectives of gay, bisexual, and queer cisgender males about inclusive parent-child sex communication. It underscores the importance of inclusive sexuality conversations between parent and child for closeted, questioning, or even heterosexual youth.  

It seems like whenever you turn on your TV, check social media or even tune into the radio, the rise in mass shootings consumes the headlines. It's something that has become an unavoidable reality in the U.S. But what does the oversaturation of violence in the media do to our psyche? Pontus Leander, the director of the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at Wayne State, said the normalization of violence culture in the U.S. could lead to more shootings. "We might not notice that in a certain context or a certain situation, that we are gradually - over a period of weeks or months or years - getting used to the idea of a behavior that was previously not only not normative, but appalling," Leander said. 

Do you have grandparents or parents who swear not to wear white after Labor Day weekend until Memorial Day weekend? The fashion rule seems to be fading, but holds some history. Local 4's style editor Jon Jordan and Wayne State University's lecturer of fashion design and merchandising Monika Sinclair weighed in on the history of the fashion rule. The rule is connected to social class in New York City and started in the 19th century. Those who were white and linen in the summer wore them for many reasons, but of a higher class, especially in New York City, could afford to wear white since they were not doing labor that would get their clothes dirty. Sinclair said the rule was started by wealthy women who came from old money who wanted to separate themselves from society. "They were the ones that could afford to leave the city and go on vacation and put away their dusty clothes from the city while wearing lightweight, white clothing. White was seen like a leisurely type of apparel back then. It would be considered formal wear because they were used to being dressed in these corsets and big gowns, but essentially, they were white," Sinclair said. "So if you had white clothing, you had money. You could afford to go on summer vacations and wear white and stay cool."  

Last Friday, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, the Detroit Regional Partnership, and a regional coalition of partners announced that they secured a $52.2 million advanced mobility grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s Build Back Better Regional Challenge. The coalition was selected out of 60 finalists nationwide and won one of the largest grants out of 21 funded projects. It will advance the state’s mobility and electrification leadership and build on Michigan’s economic momentum. TechTown Detroit is one of the five co-recipients for the grant. “This grant will create and connect a robust, comprehensive startup ecosystem, fundamentally changing the game for early-stage companies in the mobility space in Detroit,” said Ned Staebler, vice president for economic development at Wayne State University and President and CEO of TechTown Detroit.    

By Robin Erb   Death comes early to Detroit, killing residents in some neighborhoods 12 to 15 years earlier than Michiganders elsewhere. Thickening heart muscles, narrowing arteries and cholesterol deposits are hallmarks of the heart disease silently afflicting Detroiters and building toward life-threatening heart attacks or strokes. Dr. Brian O’Neil, chair of emergency medicine at Wayne State University’s School of Medicine, said that young doctors arriving in Detroit are often blown away by patients’ blood pressure readings. The coronavirus has exacerbated chronic conditions, increased the number of deaths of preventable diseases because people skipped regular check-ups, and disrupted transportation options for those seeking to get to doctors. As a result, more people who suffered heart attacks or strokes died because they laced swift medical intervention. The pandemic also proved the nimble nature of mobile health. Dr. Phil Levy, an emergency medicine doctor at Detroit’s Receiving and Sinai-Grace hospitals and a researcher at Wayne State University, was positioned to act because he and his team had gathered and arranged data for years to map out hypertension rates in the Detroit area. Their data tool, called Population Health OutcomEs aNd Information Exchange (PHOENIX) revealed neighborhoods strained by high blood pressure and stress based on social vulnerability index factors. Even in the earliest days of the pandemic, the parallels between COVID and heart disease in Detroit were obvious, Levy said. “We started seeing everything that was happening with the brown and Black communities in Detroit and around Detroit – especially around the Sinai Grace area – and the increased caseload and death rate that was occurring in Detroit,” Levy said. In April, the Wayne Health mobile health fleet began with a single van. By the end of this year, it will consist of ten vans that visit schools, churches, festivals and neighborhood parking lots.